Thanks for the reply. Glad I found it. I pretty much agree with two added counter-points:
1) My wife might very well prefer that I say approximately… nothing. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, but it might come up more and more. For example, I objected to her singing my daughter praise and worship songs that claim that Jesus will come back “riding on the clouds at the trumpet call,” since my daughter has no way to question whether someone can actually “ride on clouds,” whether that’s how the end days would happen, etc. My wife responded that it’s just “an upbeat, celebratory song,” and that she sung it at my daughter’s request. I then made up a song on the spot with a catchy sing-song melody about god being a figment of the imagination that people just make up because it makes them feel good and asked if I could sing that to her. She didn’t like the idea. In other words, she’d like to have the freedom to pray with my daughter and openly express beliefs but would prefer I kept my opinions out of it.
2) My wife really does actually believe, or thinks she does. Whether my daughter will one day see through this… I’m not sure. My wife does think that miraculous things happen as a result of prayer, but considers god’s will as to who and when a mystery—“he knows best.” So… it’s not like being raised by “cultural Catholics”—my daughter is in a house with a flesh-and-blood full believer who raises hands to praise and worship, gets up at 6a to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, prays “in the spirit”, etc.
Hope that offers some clarifications about the situation! My oldest has been staying home with me on Sundays while my wife takes our youngest (7mos) to Mass with her.
For full disclosure on my own part, I should also mention that my little sister has continued to attend church, and is in fact getting confirmed in a few months. I think based on the evidence I have that there may be a good amount of credence to the theory that women seem more prone to believe for social reasons, especially since most women who I would otherwise expect to be atheist give that as their only reason. So, unfortunately, your daughter may be as hard to lead away from the faith as your wife seems to be. Congratulations with regard to your son though.
for some reason I read “oldest” as “oldest son” the first time...no idea why. I do think it’s very likely that your elder daughter will end up atheist, and that’s what the congratulations was about.
No worries. We’ll see about the daughter. I think my wife understands more and more why I hesitate to heuristically decide in advance what’s true for her. I see the point of doing this for certain things, but not ambiguously true ones. For example, a Catholic is advised to teach his son/daughter by age 7 that the Eucharist is really the body of a risen man/god. How could they possibly comprehend this?
I could possibly see a loose analogy in teaching them not to drop things made of glass. I’m heuristically teaching-them-as-truth that gravity exists, exerts a force on matter, and that if PE=mgh is high enough, when it converts to KE it will exceed the modulus of the glass and shatter it.
They can’t comprehend either set of the necessary foundations for these heuristic “nuggets,” but one is clearly more universally accepted than the other. Even a simple appeal to teaching-as-true only what the world has accepted as true seems reasonable.
I find it perplexing that if a divine being only inspired only one true religion, that the world would remain so confused about what is is many hundreds (if not thousands) of years later. I think it should at least give one pause to consider that perhaps things aren’t as obvious or clear as one might think!
Also, importantly, it’s much easier to gather direct evidence to support the heuristic “don’t drop things made of glass” than “the Eucharist is really the body of Jesus.”
Dropping a glass vs. picking up the Bible are equivalently easy :) Whether you need to be sold on the Bible beforehand is a different story.
You’re right, though, and thus I’m far more confident in teaching-as-true those things which are in the “universally discoverable” realm vs. the “incredibly sticky and unagreed upon” realm.
This recent book discusses the evidence about the influence of genes and parenting on children’s life outcomes. Caplan claims that the evidence says for the most part parents have significant effects on who their children are in the short run but not in the long run. He does discuss the evidence for religiosity in particular and he finds mostly the same pattern. Parents have a large effect on what their children say about their religious labels (Christian, Muslim etc.) in the long run, but not much effect effect on how religious their children act (church attendance, that sort of thing).
Interesting. I’ll have to check that out, but it tracks well with Steven Pinker’s discussion of similar things in Blank Slate (amazon link), which he summarizes briefly in this TED Talk.
The talk is fascinating, especially his discussion about “twin studies,” where he seems to echo much of what you suggested above. IIRC, he rated genes and peer groups as having the top influences on children. Takes a load off :)
Thanks for the reply. Glad I found it. I pretty much agree with two added counter-points:
1) My wife might very well prefer that I say approximately… nothing. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, but it might come up more and more. For example, I objected to her singing my daughter praise and worship songs that claim that Jesus will come back “riding on the clouds at the trumpet call,” since my daughter has no way to question whether someone can actually “ride on clouds,” whether that’s how the end days would happen, etc. My wife responded that it’s just “an upbeat, celebratory song,” and that she sung it at my daughter’s request. I then made up a song on the spot with a catchy sing-song melody about god being a figment of the imagination that people just make up because it makes them feel good and asked if I could sing that to her. She didn’t like the idea. In other words, she’d like to have the freedom to pray with my daughter and openly express beliefs but would prefer I kept my opinions out of it.
2) My wife really does actually believe, or thinks she does. Whether my daughter will one day see through this… I’m not sure. My wife does think that miraculous things happen as a result of prayer, but considers god’s will as to who and when a mystery—“he knows best.” So… it’s not like being raised by “cultural Catholics”—my daughter is in a house with a flesh-and-blood full believer who raises hands to praise and worship, gets up at 6a to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, prays “in the spirit”, etc.
Hope that offers some clarifications about the situation! My oldest has been staying home with me on Sundays while my wife takes our youngest (7mos) to Mass with her.
For full disclosure on my own part, I should also mention that my little sister has continued to attend church, and is in fact getting confirmed in a few months. I think based on the evidence I have that there may be a good amount of credence to the theory that women seem more prone to believe for social reasons, especially since most women who I would otherwise expect to be atheist give that as their only reason. So, unfortunately, your daughter may be as hard to lead away from the faith as your wife seems to be. Congratulations with regard to your son though.
Huh. That’s quite interesting.
I can’t find a sentence above that led to this, but I actually have two daughters :) We’ll have to see what happens!
Thanks for your comments.
for some reason I read “oldest” as “oldest son” the first time...no idea why. I do think it’s very likely that your elder daughter will end up atheist, and that’s what the congratulations was about.
No worries. We’ll see about the daughter. I think my wife understands more and more why I hesitate to heuristically decide in advance what’s true for her. I see the point of doing this for certain things, but not ambiguously true ones. For example, a Catholic is advised to teach his son/daughter by age 7 that the Eucharist is really the body of a risen man/god. How could they possibly comprehend this?
I could possibly see a loose analogy in teaching them not to drop things made of glass. I’m heuristically teaching-them-as-truth that gravity exists, exerts a force on matter, and that if PE=mgh is high enough, when it converts to KE it will exceed the modulus of the glass and shatter it.
They can’t comprehend either set of the necessary foundations for these heuristic “nuggets,” but one is clearly more universally accepted than the other. Even a simple appeal to teaching-as-true only what the world has accepted as true seems reasonable.
I find it perplexing that if a divine being only inspired only one true religion, that the world would remain so confused about what is is many hundreds (if not thousands) of years later. I think it should at least give one pause to consider that perhaps things aren’t as obvious or clear as one might think!
Also, importantly, it’s much easier to gather direct evidence to support the heuristic “don’t drop things made of glass” than “the Eucharist is really the body of Jesus.”
Dropping a glass vs. picking up the Bible are equivalently easy :) Whether you need to be sold on the Bible beforehand is a different story.
You’re right, though, and thus I’m far more confident in teaching-as-true those things which are in the “universally discoverable” realm vs. the “incredibly sticky and unagreed upon” realm.
This recent book discusses the evidence about the influence of genes and parenting on children’s life outcomes. Caplan claims that the evidence says for the most part parents have significant effects on who their children are in the short run but not in the long run. He does discuss the evidence for religiosity in particular and he finds mostly the same pattern. Parents have a large effect on what their children say about their religious labels (Christian, Muslim etc.) in the long run, but not much effect effect on how religious their children act (church attendance, that sort of thing).
Interesting. I’ll have to check that out, but it tracks well with Steven Pinker’s discussion of similar things in Blank Slate (amazon link), which he summarizes briefly in this TED Talk.
The talk is fascinating, especially his discussion about “twin studies,” where he seems to echo much of what you suggested above. IIRC, he rated genes and peer groups as having the top influences on children. Takes a load off :)